One of the biggest arguments against NFTs is "Why would I want to buy a picture of an Ape when I anyone else can just right click on it and save it for free?"
That's the stupidest argument ever, but the deniers are correct right here, because minting a freaking burger NFT and selling it for 2k USD is just money laundering or The greater fool economy in action and it is not a real use case, and yet, because nobody else other than a boomer company has come up with an actual use case that normies can grasp, people still believe that NFTs are stupid - which currently they are to the untrained eye that doesn't see farther than what is in the horizon.
But hear me out, real NFT use cases could be a thing right now
These companies are literally resting on their laurels by not grasping NFTs and coming up with different use cases for their products, something that would give them a massive edge against its competitors.
The uninitiated think NFTs are stupid and yet, they use products that could easily develop an NFT for their product or service and absolutely demolish the competition - granted, it would open up a potential secondary market for previously bought products but, there is also money to be made in regulating said markets or even offering said market (OpenSea but with a freaking use case rings a bell?).
Proof of Property of a picture of a Punk might be a lame use case, but what if Steam minted NFTs to validate property of an online game? And what if a user could resell that game in a second-hand market? A second-hand market just by name, because the assets are really brand new - they are digital assets, duh.
Yeah yeah, don't get started, I know it goes against every capitalist mindset to allow second-hand markets when the current market works perfectly in favor of the company that sells games to each and every customer that wants to play any game - I am thinking Steam by the way. It would be counterproductive to develop something that would crush their sales by having to compete to any other previous game buyer but hear me out, what if Steam developed their own chain - or built on top of another one - and managed fees, escrow fees and all that crap?
Yeah I get you again, fuck intermediaries.
I haven't really thought this through, but I know there's an NFT use case out there for Steam and it's got to do with a secondary market, proof of ownership, minting costs and own blockchain or at least own token. I know there is.
The same goes for all these motherlovers...
They all sell movies and you have to download their app, give them your personal info, credit card data just so that you can own a Movie or Series' episode. But in reality that movie is not yours, you are paying retail cost for something that you can't actually do anything with except watch it over and over.
It's first-time buyer economy at it's best, and these Streaming services have it all figured out in their favor and we are just too stupid to realize how much they squeezing us without even noticing we are being laughed at.
The Streaming Squeeze
Let's talk Magic: The Gathering. Imagine you are a geek like me that enjoys playing this trading card game on a Friday night instead of being out drinking beer and being handsome.
You go to your local store for the FNM (Friday Night Magic) and you win the tournament, earn a few booster packs and you get an ultra rare card in one of them and decide to sell it, but once another tournament players offers to buy it 100 bucks and you agree. Not a second passes and the store owner barges in and says "Sorry pal, if you want to buy it, you have to buy it from me and my price is $200" If you want to use it for your deck on MY store - and be sure his store is the only one in town that sells Magic -, take it or leave it.
Shit's bananas, right?
I would start shooting right then and there, no questions asked.
Well, that's what the streaming services are doing to each of us, and we don't even realize we are being scammed into buying everything from them.
Now don't come and tell me "they are a privately owned company that can do whatever with their products and if they own the rights for the movie or the series they can sell it however they choose to".
iTs a FrEe MaRkeT
The market regulates itself, yeah. The consumers will decide with their wallet how to react to the companies offering the products they want, and the supply and demand will regulate the prices YADA YADA YADA.
That doesn't work on a market overly saturated of Streams - or pretty much any other digital service of the likes - where all of them have the same strategy of squeezing the money of the customers and have a solid front between all of them. None of them will change this strategy, in the end I would be surprised if they are not all owned by the same people and have the same guidelines (Look up Larry Fink, that's a write-up for another day for me, but it is a good read for today for you).
Enough rant.
The moment one of these Streams comes up with an NFT and secondary market and something along the lines of the example I gave you above with Steam, that's the moment when that Stream services makes all the others eat shit and die.
You can own them, but you can't sell them
Are they really yours?
Could NFTs solve this in favor of the customer and not the capitalist piggie company?
Piracy solves this issue in a definite, illegal way. You could pirate the new Iron Man movie. But you still cannot sell that movie, nor do you own the rights to that movie. They movie is not legally yours. Saving a movie you illegally downloaded to your hard drive is not the same as owning it. So yeah, piracy in the end doesn't solve this issue in favor of the people.
The whole point of Crypto and I believe NFTs as well, is to go against the status-quo, disrupt traditional finance and to create options that give power to the people instead of the corporations, so perhaps companies adopting NFTs goes against these values, but this is definitely something to look into.
I have no idea how a business plan and model would work for a company that deals in digital assets but I definitely think that including NFTs to their BM is something that will change their market radically, and whoever does it first will be the one to punch not twice, but one hundred times.
Evolution isn't real, otherwise why are there still monkeys?
People who believe that NFTs are ust - or will stay at just - a blockchain representation of a monkey depicted as a .jpeg file are the same people who would ask "if we evolved from monkeys why do monkeys still exist?"
The people that believe this are simply misinformed and have no idea the power to be unleashed by someone who actually knows their shit about innovation, creativity, business and coding (which is why I am learning to code, by the way) and how much can NFTs change the current state of the world - perhaps an even bigger change than the one that started in 2009.
Imagine thinking that the internet is nothing but a place where people post porn and commit cyber crimes. Yes, that happens, on the internet, because of the internet. But that is just one way the internet can be used. It is still a revolutionary tool that can be used in many different ways. Unfortunately right now, NFTs are the porn and scam tier of the internet and anyone stating that NFTs are just Apes on a shelf sounds like a boomer who doesn't understand what they are talking about.
I will say it again, right now NFTs are nowhere near where they can be, and right now their use case is arguably higher than stupid tier but that doesn't mean that the concept is stupid on itself.